It is observed that in this context, “baking” should be understood to mean at least the complete or partial browning and/or the complete or partial cooking of a product.
In the food industry, there is currently an increasing interest for products which are ready to be consumed by a consumer or which require only a short preparation time for consumption. Examples hereof are pastas or pieces of meat which are completely or partially pre-baked and which can be prepared by a consumer by heating briefly, for instance by heating in a microwave oven.
During manufacture of such products, it is important that the baking process can be accurately controlled. With so-called ready-to-eat meals, it is for instance important that the different components of the meal be pretreated in such a manner that the remaining preparation time of the components is substantially the same and that after a brief preparation by the consumer, each of the components of the meal has the proper degree of cooking. In the case of perishable products, it is further important that it can be predicted with great certainty which degree of cooking is reached, because the storage life of the product, i.e. the safe time interval between the moment when the product is prebaked and the moment when it should have been consumed, can thereby be increased. In particular for meat products, at least meat-containing products, the above problems play a substantial part.
Conventionally, products, for instance pieces of meat, are prebaked by moving them through a trough of boiling oil by means of a conveyor track. A drawback hereof is that the baking process cannot be controlled fast enough. In particular, the temperature of the oil cannot be adjusted fast enough when, suddenly, many products are immersed in the oil or when, suddenly, the size of the products to be baked varies. Consequently, as far as the degree of cooking is concerned, there should always be observed an ample safety margin, as a result of which the storage life of a product is relatively short and a product, after preparation by a consumer, is often overdone.
Further, a drawback of baking with oil is that a product loses relatively much moisture during baking. This reduces the weight of the product, thereby increasing the costs per unit of weight of the end product. Further, an oil-baked product contains relatively much fat, which is currently usually considered undesirable by the consumer. In addition, the oil affects the taste of the product, as a result of which high requirements have to be imposed on the quality of the oil. Consequently, the oil has to be replaced often. This does not only have the drawback that large quantities of new oil have to be purchased, but also that large amounts of fouled oil have to be discharged. Moreover, keeping the oil at the proper temperature requires relatively much energy.
To avoid these drawbacks, it has already been proposed, for instance, to precook pieces of meat by means of steam. A drawback hereof is that the meat assumes an grey color, which is usually experienced as unappealing by the consumer. Particularly for products which are to be consumer-prepared by microwave oven only, this grey appearance has proved to be a major problem from the point of view of selling.